Treasuring God's All Sufficient Word

If you have your Bibles tonight, I'm going to be jumping into Psalms 119. It's a really short chapter we're going to be looking at, Psalm 119. When you find Psalm 119, we're going to read the first stanza of the Psalm. There's 22 stanzas, and does anybody know why there are 22 stanzas in Psalms 119? Because there are 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet.

Right? Psalm 119 is longer than 30 books of the Bible. This is a long chapter. It's longer than 30 other books throughout the Scripture, so unique. We're not going to preach the entire chapter tonight, but I really felt led to dive into some thoughts on this. Let's read verse 1 down to verse number 8. Psalm 119 says, Blessed are the undefiled in the way who walk in the law of the Lord. Blessed are they that keep his testimonies, that seek him with the whole heart. They also do no iniquity.

They walk in his ways. Thou hast commanded us to keep thy precepts diligently. O that my ways were directed to keep thy statutes.

You ever feel that way? Then shall I not be ashamed when I have respect unto all thy commandments. I will praise thee with uprightness of heart when I shall have learned thy righteous judgments. I will keep thy statutes.

O forsake me not utterly. Father, your word is our delight, and may it be our greatest delight. May we love you in loving your word, and may your word be our feast. May it be what we receive from you, Lord, the engrafted word that not only saves but nourishes and sanctifies our life. Lord, do your work tonight and let your word be put on display. And I pray if anyone is out of line with your word and either not saved or not living in obedience, Lord, I pray that you would draw hearts to you tonight. Be glorified through the preaching of your holy book.

And I pray for our teen and our junior high and our elementary and Awana ministries tonight that you would pour out your blessing there as well. We ask it in Jesus' name. And God's people said, man, you may be seated. The great reformer Martin Luther said, I have made a covenant with God that he sends me neither visions, dreams nor even angels. I am well satisfied with the gift of holy scriptures, which give me abundant instruction and all that I need to know both for this life and for that which is to come.

Pretty, pretty amazing statements. The phrase sola scriptura, which is Latin for scripture alone, sola single alone and scriptura for scripture, was the great cry of the reformers. And it was birthed out of the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century, which really challenged the papacy and authority of the Catholic Church.

The Reformation was led by Martin Luther when he nailed his 95 Thesis to the church doors in Wittenberg, Germany. This became the catalyst for this Protestant Reformation. The Catholic Church had elevated tradition above scripture for centuries, resulting in many unbiblical practices such as praying to Mary or dead saints, indulgences. They were basically saying indulgences. You can give the church a certain sum of money for remission of sins, getting out of purgatory, treasury of merit.

Some people, basically treasury of merit is there are some people who have so much righteousness it gets dumped into this treasury of merit and when you pray for those saints in purgatory or these people in purgatory, then that grace can be, that extra righteousness can be accounted to their life. Transubstantiationism, which is the elements of the Lord's table being turned into the actual body and blood of Jesus, authority, immaculate, conception, perpetual virginity that Mary never had any other children but she was a virgin her entire life. Some of these teachings that the Catholic Church has created that are not in scripture. So Martin Luther was rebuking the Catholic Church for some of these teachings and indulgences was really at the forefront of a lot of that. But in 1521, Luther was summoned to the Diet of Worms in Germany.

Diet was a assembly of governmental or religious leaders called to settle a political or religious matter and Worms was a city in Germany. But with the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V presiding, Luther's theological works and words were being challenged at that council. Martin Luther was then asked two simple questions, are these your writings and do you recant of them? And he knew that if he would deny these words, he would deny scripture because that's what he was declaring in his writings and in his words. Therefore, on April 18, 1521, Luther delivered his now famous speech boldly standing on the Word of God and he said this, quote, unless therefore I am convinced by the testimony of scripture or by the clearest reasoning, unless I am persuaded by means of the passages I have quoted and unless they thus render my conscious, he says, unless they thus render my conscious bound by the Word of God, I cannot and will not retract for it is unsafe for a Christian to speak against his conscience. Here I stand, I can do no other, may God help me.

Amen. And he stood on the Word of God and that's really what launched the Reformation when God's Word became available to people. The printing press was established 15th century and you had the Word of God being translated from it had been in Latin and the Vulgate was now being translated into Greek by men like Desiderius Erasmus and then in German by Martin Luther. Probably four or five months ago I was going to do a series on where our Bible came from and I'm still going to do that.

What happened was all summer long there were problems to really, I didn't want it to be interrupted and so I will, that is in the works, okay, so if you have a desire to know the history of the Bible, we will get into that. But the Reformation is really one of the reasons we're here tonight is we are people bound to the Word of God. We believe the Word of God is the final authority for our faith and practice.

It is not the pastor, it is not some pope, it is not some person. We believe God has given the Word of God to us. We can read it, we can understand it and we are to line our life up by it. The power is not in some ecclesiastical authority that tells you what the Bible means and you cannot challenge that, rather the Bible has given us so that we can see through the Scriptures. And that's why I say when I preach, everything that's preached from this pulpit should be tested by what?

By the Scriptures. Because listen, you're not going to stand before Pastor Josh one day, right? And I'm not going to stand before you.

I'm going to stand before God Almighty. And so it is essential for us to understand we must know the truth, we must submit to the truth, we must live the truth, we must preach the truth and the truth is what we will be judged by. Jesus said, if you reject me and my words, the same word that I've spoken will judge you in the last day. Those are heavy statements in Matthew 12.48.

That is compelling, isn't it? You're not going to stand before an ecclesiastical body one day, you're going to stand before the Logos made flesh and the word through which he brought to us. And so tonight I want to look at what has been referred to as the Mount Everest of the Book of Psalms. Most of us are acquainted with Psalm 119 as the longest psalm in the Bible. It's not only the longest containing 176 verses, but it's also the longest chapter in the Bible. And you would ask yourself, what would God be so enthralled about to write a chapter that's 176 verses long that's longer than 30 other individual books of the Bible? And the central theme of the longest psalm in the Bible is the Bible. The Word of God is the passion and there's nothing that has a stronger theme anywhere in the Bible that has one chapter that's just consumed with one theme.

I mean, out of 176 verses, there are eight different words that the author of this chapter uses in reference to the Word of God. He calls the Word of God the law or Torah, the testimony. It's called precepts. It's called the statutes of the Lord. The Bible is called the commandment of the Lord. It's called the judgment of the Lord, which is an idea of a sense for living by that rule. It's called the Word of God.

It's called the promise. So these are eight different titles given to the Word of God in Psalm 119. It is debated on how many verses actually contain statements about the Word of God of these 176, but Warren Wiersbe lists seven verses that do not contain a reference to the Word of God in Psalm 176.

Others say there's only three. I would say there's three that clearly don't reference the Word of God in them out of 176 verses, and there's four that it's debatable. So even if you take seven out of the 176, that's 168 verses that are referencing the Word of God, that's 96 plus percent of this chapter of these verses that are using a title of the Word of God in the verses themselves.

It's really an incredible thing. Now, Psalms 119 is also an acrostic, so the Hebrew alphabet has 22 letters. And when you read this, you don't see this in the English because we translate the words into English. Greek has a lot of similarities to English, where Hebrew, the semantics of it are very different. But when you read the first eight verses, each one of those verses start with the Hebrew letter Aleph, the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet. So if you were to read this in Hebrew, it would have, like in English, it would be like every verse starting with the letter A.

It would start that way. Then the second stanza is in verse 9 through 16. All of those start with what's known as Beth, B-E-T-H is their second letter. The third letter is Gemel, which is verse 17 down to 24. So if you take 22 different letters times eight verses each, eight verses long in those stanzas, then you come up with 176. So it's a psalm.

It's a song, and they're writing this out as an arrangement of such. Now, the author of this psalm does not identify himself. Some have suggested it was Moses, others say it was David or Daniel or Ezra. Whoever it was, it was somebody who had an incredible longing for the Word of God.

Warner Wiersbe suggests it was perhaps Jeremiah, which I think is very intriguing. Many of the statements in Psalm 119 could be applied to Jeremiah. Whoever authored the psalm was a high-profile person because it talks about them being opposed by rulers and princes. They also spoke to kings in verse 46.

Jeremiah spoke with kings at least five times, according to Jeremiah 1-2. The psalmist here is persecuted for their faithfulness to God. We read about this in verse 84, 85, 98, 107, 109, and several other verses. We know Jeremiah faced incredible persecution for preaching. They lowered him down in a pit.

He sunk down in the mire. The psalmist was surrounded by people who criticized God's law and didn't want it. That was the same situation for Jeremiah, wasn't it? The weeping prophet. The psalmist hid God's Word in their heart, and Jeremiah was definitely the prophet who had God's Word in his heart, according to Jeremiah 31, 31-34. And then the psalmist wept over the people of their day. Psalm 119, 36 says, Rivers of water, waters run down mine eyes, because they keep not thy law. He was so grieved, so grieved that the people didn't keep the law of God. And that's what our heart should be when we look across the landscape of our country.

It shouldn't be politics that grieve our heart as much as the brokenness, spiritual brokenness of our country. Jeremiah also was one who wept for his people. In Jeremiah 9-1 he says, O that my head were waters, and my eyes were a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people. They were under the judgment of God by Babylon. But no matter who authored this, we learned a lot from them about the Word of God.

We will see how they used it through both the good and the bad times. And so what's really, again, amazing is the passion and love they have for the Scriptures. They talk about the Scriptures as though they were something as delightful as food. In Psalm 119, 103 says, How sweet are thy words unto my taste, yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth. Honey is a wonderful thing. Anybody like honey? My wife keeps bees, and so you get that fresh honey, man.

That's good stuff until the bee comes back after it. He valued God's Word more than any treasure. Psalm 119, 14, I have rejoiced in the way of thy testimonies as much as in all riches. Psalm 119, 72, The law of thy mouth is better unto me than thousands of gold and silver. I talked to somebody this week who was telling me that they had lived a very successful life.

They have really achieved the things and goals in life, but they said it's just empty, and I realize I need more. And Sunday they had given their life to Christ, and I praise God for that. But something to understand, the author had such a high view of the Word of God and saw it more valuable than anything else in the world. What is humbling to us is to realize that all they had was the Old Testament. They weren't reading the New Testament. They didn't have Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. They didn't have the gospel narrative. They didn't have the book of Acts.

They didn't have these things. So many Christians today say the Old Testament is perhaps unnecessary, that maybe not even valuable to spend time reading. I've heard people say things that are very foolish like, I only read the red letters. Please don't ever say something like that.

That is a terrible, terrible thought. Red letters are no more the Word of God than the dark or black letters. All Scripture is given by theophneustos, by God breathing it out. God inspired the Scriptures.

All of it is His Word. He also had such an overwhelming love and passion for God's Word. In Psalm 119 verse 20 it says, My soul breaketh for the longing that it hath unto thy judgments at all times. Has your heart broken for the Word of God, just a longing for it? I fear today that we lack such a driving love for God's Word as many of the old saints did. One reason for this is they struggled to have a copy of the Word of God and because they didn't have a lot of Scriptures, they didn't take it for granted. I think that the overabundance of Scriptures that we have today can often be taken for granted. Another reason I believe is that many of the older saints of past generations lived in a time and place where they were persecuted for their Christian faith. We live in this very unique bubble of history. It's a bubble of history. You know, most Christians don't live like this.

They don't. We only know what we know here, the freedoms, all the things we have in the United States, but it's not been like that in the vast majority of history. To name the name of Christ was extremely costly.

A lot of times we have a lot of things we can complain about in our nation, some sinful things and some injustices, but I can tell you we live in an incredibly free nation. You can walk down the street with a Bible and nobody's going to persecute you. When I was in college, I had a buddy who was in Israel and he was on the Arab end of town. His dad started a church in Bethlehem and he said, man, it's incredible. He said, I come here and you guys can talk to anybody about Jesus. He said, if I carried a Bible around, it was dangerous. It was dangerous.

He learned to fight just to be able to stay alive. I mean, his dad's church got shot up multiple times. I mean, that's over in the Bethlehem area where Jesus was born, Bethlehem area.

So just where we live at, we are so blessed. Psalm 119, 161, he says, princes have persecuted me without a cause. This was somebody who faced persecution. I can tell you, if you're persecuted for the faith, you're going to take very serious the word of God.

Because if persecution hit America and you're going to be persecuted for going to church, that's really going to test the waters whether you believe it or not. As we go through this passage of scripture, we're going to see that this man, and if you were to read throughout the Psalm, I don't know how much I'm going to cover in the coming weeks, but we may just glance through some of this. But today I want to focus in on the first eight verses. But what's interesting is when you read Psalm 119, it's overwhelming the love they had for the word of God, and all they had was the Old Testament. When you study the New Testament, what's interesting is all the New Testament saints had was the Old Testament to really work with.

The Old Testament was sufficient to guide them through the challenges that the New Testament saints were facing. This was true of the Lord Jesus Christ when he faced temptation by Satan. He wasn't quoting anything in the New Testament which was not written yet. He could have said anything and it would have been scripture, right? I mean, he can speak ex cathedra at any time.

He could just say it and it's true. But instead he quotes Deuteronomy three times. He chose to quote the Old Testament text to overcome Satan's temptations. It is important to understand that as you read through the New Testament, those Christians were using the New Testament.

On the day of Pentecost, Peter preached out of Joel 2, 28 through 32. And as he quotes that entire portion in Acts 2, verse 16 through 21, chapter 2, 16 says, but this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel. He quotes that all the way through verse 21, which says, and it shall come to pass that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved. What do we read about, keep that verse up there, what do we read about that verse later in the New Testament? In the book of Romans chapter 10, verse 13, right? That whosoever, it's probably in chapter 8 too if somebody said that, but it's in a couple different places, but especially in Romans chapter 10, verse 13, that whosoever shall call upon the name of, what's interesting, just as a rabbit trail, sorry, I tried to stop myself.

So Jehovah Witnesses will say that Jesus is not God, right? And so, you know, so they've changed their Bible, they have the New World Translation, they've substituted the deity of Christ, they've changed words all through it. The one place they didn't get is Romans chapter 10, verse 13. Romans 10, verse 13, we know is talking specifically about Jesus because if you go back to verse 9, it says that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in thine heart, God raised him from the dead, you shall be saved.

It goes into verse 13 and says, for whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. The word Lord is a New Testament Greek word kurias, it's from the Old Testament Hebrew Yahweh. And we know it's Yahweh, which is the covenant name for God because Joel 2 32 says it like this, whosoever shall call upon the name of, in the Hebrew it's Yahweh, shall be saved.

And if you were to read Joel 2 32 in your, in the Old Testament, just turning there now, you don't have to do that, but if you just mark it down, you'll notice that the name is capitalized. And whenever it's capitalized, you know that's a covenant name Yahweh. Other times it's Adonai, it could be translated as God. And so, or Lord, I'm sorry, it's translated as Lord. When it's capital L, capital O, capital R, capital D, you know that's the covenant name Yahweh being used, the Hebrew word that's behind that English word. That's one thing, if you read the Legacy Standard Bible, which is a new translation that's come out somewhat recently in the last few years, but it translates as Yahweh every time that word shows up.

That is a translation that's elevated that reading. But when Stephen gave his defense, if you remember when Stephen gave his defense before the Jewess Sanhedrin in Acts 7, he opened up with Genesis 12 1. He closed with Isaiah 66 verse 1 and 2. Between these two passages, he referred to God's word from Exodus, Deuteronomy, and Amos. In Acts 8, Philip led the Ethiopian eunuch out of Isaiah chapter what?

I'm testing you all tonight, right? Isaiah chapter, you better know this. Isaiah chapter 53, yeah, look at you, nobody wanted to be wrong on that. Isaiah 53, who hath believed our report and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed, he shall grow up before him as a tender planet, as a root out of a dry ground, he hath no form nor calmliness, and when we shall see him as there's no beauty that we should desire him, he's despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, and we hid as it were our faces from him, he is despised and we esteemed him not, surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, but we did esteem him smitten, stricken of God, and afflicted, but he was wounded for our transgressions, bruised for iniquities, the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed. And it goes on all the way down to verse number 12. He was ready to quote and to share that truth and explain that text. And if there's one text in the Old Testament you should know in your heart and be very familiar with, it's Isaiah 53. If you're not, then you need to write that down in your hand and you need to read that because that is a very essential, that's one of the greatest Old Testament passages dealing with the person of Jesus Christ. I would ask the question, are you ready to lead somebody to Christ from the Old Testament? Are you ready?

Can you do that? We need to be ready. The New Testament's really easy. If you can't from the New Testament, you are on assignment to come to foundations Sunday at 10 o'clock.

You need to repent and then you need to come to class. I don't want to be too harsh, but if there's anything in life you need to be ready to do is to bring somebody to Christ through the Scriptures. Right? I mean, we're walking around the world with people with stage four sin cancer and if we have the remedy and we're not ready to share it, that's a problem. Y'all with me? If I offend you, then get over it, right? Because the lost souls are more important than our comfort. Y'all believe me?

Right? So we need a little discomfort sometimes and I'm usually not this harsh if you're somewhat new, but as you read through the New Testament, you're going to find 300 direct quotations of the Old Testament in the New and at least a thousand references of the Old Testament in the New. Again, it's good to read passages side by side in other translations. I would encourage you as you read through, say your King James, to have like a New American standard because New American standard will capitalize every Old Testament quotation in the New.

It's like one of the only translations that does that. When you do that, you're like, oh, I didn't know that was quoting the Old Testament. It will help you.

It will bring more. When you read the Bible, you want as much information as possible, right? You want to know as much information about that passage as possible and that will be very beneficial. So now what you find is the New Testament saints in their ministry, their theology and their decision making was led by the truth found in the Old Testament. And people say, well, the Old Testament's like eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth and we don't believe that in the New Testament.

Oh, we do. We do believe eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. Again, people who misunderstand stuff like that, it's because they don't, if you come to Lighthouse very long, you're going to understand that is what the Bible teaches in the New. What that basically is saying is the punishment cannot exceed the crime. Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth was a good jurisprudence. It was saying you cannot punish someone more than what they've committed in a crime.

And it's exactly what even our legal standards are today in our country. So going back, we need to be people who read not only the New Testament, we need to also read the what? You need to be in the Old Testament.

You need to be familiar with that. You need to know the text. So tonight I want to look at treasuring God's all sufficient word. And let's jump into this section here that we have before us.

Now, three thoughts. First of all, the blessed life we see in verse one through two is a result of diligently pursuing God's word. Verse one, he says, blessed are the undefiled in the way. So the Psalm starts in verse one and two by saying who the blessed person is, the person that is blessed by God. It is found only in verse one and two in this chapter. Verse one, blessed are the undefiled.

It's talking about the blameless. It's not someone who doesn't sin, but it's someone who gives a wholehearted devotion to the Lord. They don't get caught up in an unauthentic life that's being drug into sin. They're undefiled in the way as they walk the path. They are on the path of wholehearted devotion to God. It is a path of sincerity.

It is a path of integrity. Verse one again says who walk in the law of the Lord. The word law is not referring to the Ten Commandments. It's talking about the entire revelation of God found in the Old Testament scripture. Now the person of God, the person blessed I should say by God then is the one who has a wholehearted, sincere devotion walking his life continually in the law of the Lord. We read that in Psalm 119, 105, don't we?

Thy word is a what? A lamp unto my feet, a light to my path. It directs me. It gives me guidance.

I can tell you one thing I appreciate. Whenever I'd move to a city and we'd launch a church, I'd go out and visit people and unrolling the map. Who remembers the days of the map? Yeah, you unroll the map.

The young bucks today, I mean they don't even know what you're talking about. It's always funny because you know when you're talking to someone who grew up in a generation where they had the maps, today they're like, listen, I don't need to know what it's by. I don't need to know what trees are around. Just give me the directions. I'll put it in and my phone will take me exactly there.

Anybody know what I'm talking about? You ask somebody for directions. They're like, go down Highway 47. You turn left on this and they start going through and you're like, okay, just give me the address. This is all I need.

Give me the address. Who explains the directions to somebody? Who's guilty of that? Yeah, see, see some of y'all are, you're giving me dirty looks right now. I can feel, I feel judged right now. I feel so judged right now, but I can tell you it's the younger generations like just give me the address, but it's so nice. I'm so thankful that there's, and you know my daughter years ago put a man's voice on there with an Indian accent, like eight years ago, whenever, I mean, it was a long time ago.

It's still on there. It's like the only guy I can take directions from. I hear somebody else. I'm like, I don't even know what that guy's talking about over here.

He names things wrong sometimes, but he's my Indian buddy. I follow his directions, you know, but, and this is so reflective. I think of Psalms one, blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of thee, what, of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful, but notice what it says, but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and his law doth he, what, meditate day and night. Isn't that reflective of Joshua chapter 1 verse 8 and 9? This book of the law shall not depart out of your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night, right, that you may observe to do all that's written in it. The only way you can walk in the Word is if you're in the Word. People ask this question, I think it's a fantastic question. How do you walk in the Spirit? Isn't that so abstract? It's really kind of annoying sometimes. Like, you need to walk in the Spirit.

Like, what does that even mean? What does that mean, walk in the Spirit, and how do you know? The way you walk in the Spirit is by walking in the Word that the Spirit has written. All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and the author of Scripture is specifically God the Holy Spirit, 2 Peter 1, 20 and 21. For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of men, but holy men of God spake as they were moved or born along by the Holy Spirit.

Will spake the Holy Ghost by Isaiah the prophet. I mean, this is all through the Scriptures. So, to walk in the Spirit is to walk in the Word. So, if I'm going to walk in the Word, or walk in the Spirit, I need to know what the Word of God says so I can walk in the Spirit by walking in the Word.

This is the course that we are to take. So, the directions that we have is not the voice of an Indian man, but the voice of the author of Scripture. So, in verse 1 of this, 176 verse chapter starts by telling us that if we want to be blessed, we must have a right pursuit which is a wholehearted devotion to walk in the Word of God. Verse 2 continues this, it says blessed are they that keep his testimonies, that seek him with the whole heart. I love what Charles Spurgeon says, he says, what a second blessing?

Yes, they are doubly blessed whose outward life is supported by inward zeal for God's glory. And so, notice two things from verse 2. The blessed are not those who hear the Word only, but those who keep the Word. It's one thing to hear the Word of God, it's another thing to obey it.

If you have children, you know the difference. In a court of law, someone may ask, be asked to give their testimony to bear witness of some event they have knowledge of. Here in verse 7, the word testimony speaks of Scripture as God's own divine self-disclosure. It's his witness of himself.

He's testifying to who he is. I don't design God, God designs me. I was sharing a gossip with somebody this week and they said, well if that's true about God then I don't want to accept that. And I said, well, the thing is, God made us in his image. I said, what would happen if we were to make God in our image? I said, what would that make us? And he rightly said, that would make us God. He said, you're correct. And he realized what he had done was wrong.

And we have to be careful of that, don't we? God defines himself, we don't define him. Psalm 19-7 said, the law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul to testimony of the Lord is sure.

It makes wise and simple. The word sure there in Psalm 19-7 means it's trustworthy, it is reliable, you can believe it. Sometimes people can say things in a testimony that is not true, they can testify of something that's not true.

God testifying of himself is an accurate record. Going on, the blessed person is also the one who keeps the testimony of God. The word keep there is a root word that means to guard.

We have quite a few military folks in our church, we're so thankful for you. This is the idea of standing guard like a soldier. You're keeping it, you are diligent, you are watching over it.

It is something that you give attention to. Very thankful for the, you know, we need to pray for our president's safety as well as those that are running such as former President Donald Trump. Thankful that, you know, there were people on his guard that saw that man in the bushes with a rifle, right? They were being diligent.

They weren't being diligent, they wouldn't have spied that out in the second assassination attempt against him. I was speaking up on the stage Sunday and afterwards somebody said, you know, all I could think of was right behind you there's a building, there's a water tower, there's another building. I said, well you better be, is there anybody up there?

You just sat there? I said, hey, if I go down, I go up, right? If Preacher dies, the next guy up, you know, keep the word going. So, but verse two, he goes on, he says, they that seek him, it's also with the whole heart. And this is really the foundation of a faithful keeper. It's a whole heart devotion.

Let me say something that is important. It's easier to go all in with Christ than halfway. It's easier to carry the whole cross than half the cross. It's easier to get over the whole fence than just straddle the fence.

And there are some people that are like riding the fence. And what makes it so difficult is when you're not fully committed. You have to really commit to it. You have to like really give in and just God, this is, and the more you surrender, the more he, in other words, life goes smoother and it's easier when your hand's not on the wheel with his. You submit to the Lord.

You obey him. Going on, it says they seek him with their whole heart. This is again, a whole heart of devotion. And so Jesus declared, this is the greatest commandment that you would love God with all of your heart, soul, mind and strength. And the resulting evidence of a true love for God will always be evidenced by a true love and desire to follow his word. Listen, you cannot love the God of the word and not love the word of God. God's word is the Lord's own testimony of himself. The way you treat the Bible is the way you treat God. If I treat the word lightly, I'm treating God lightly.

It would be like your loved one writing you a letter and if you cast it aside or never read it, that's a reflection of how you're treating them, is it not? Today, people can often speak of their love for God, but does that love reflect a love for the word of God? How can you say you love God and not be in his word? You would want to see him. You would want to see him and you will see him through the scripture. You will behold his glory. You will fasten your eyes on that which is true of him. The only way we know God is not through, as Martin Luther said, I don't need dreams and visions and angels visits.

I just need his word. Jesus taught even those that were his true family were those who cherished his word. When they came to him and said, your mother and brother want to talk to you, he says, who are my mother and brother? And they did hear the word of God and keep it are my mother and brother. His family are those who hold to the word of God. I had someone years ago who left the church and they said this, well, I think you make the word of God too big of a deal.

And that's what they told me. You just make the word of God too big of a deal at lighthouse and it should just all be about love. Just all needs to all be about love. Well, I said that's true, but you know that Jesus said we, how we express our love is in John 14 15. He said, if you love me, keep my commandments.

They didn't have anything to say back, but I said that's, that's, that's love. Love isn't abstract either. It's connected to something real and objective. Like, like love holds the truth. And let me say this, love preaches the truth. Love doesn't tell the people what they want to hear. It tells them what is best for them.

That's what love does. When you love people enough, you will tell them what they must know. So the blessed person is the one who with a wholehearted devotion to God, it's characterized by a pursuit of God's word and a diligence to keep and follow every word of it. Secondly, diligent, diligently pursuing God's word will be evidenced by avoiding sin in verse three through seven here in our text. According to verse three, what will a diligent pursuit of God's word cause us to not do? It says in verse three, they also do no iniquity. They walk in his ways. We can't love God and love sin.

There's, they go in opposite directions. God's word will lead us to a pure life. Don't we read that in Ephesians chapter five, that he may wash and sanctify and cleanser with washing of water by the word to present himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or wrinkle or any such thing. And so the word of God has a cleansing effect. When Jesus prays for disciples to be sanctified, what did he pray? John 17, 17, sanctify them through thy what?

Truth. Thy word is truth. What did he pray and what did he say to them in John 15 verse three? He says, now you are clean through the word that I've spoken to you. God's word has a cleansing effect. Sometimes people get away from the word because they don't want to get away from their sin, right? You don't want to be in the word of God if you're going to be caught up in sin.

And so the word of God is a sanctifying, it's a cleansing, it's a washing. Always enjoyed the story of the young boy whose grandfather was a coal miner and he had an old dirty bucket filled with holes. And he told his boys to say, I want you to, grandson, I want you to go down to the creek right there and fill it up with water and bring it back to the house. And he brought down that old dirty coal bucket, fill it up with water in that stream, ran it back up there.

And by the time he got back, the holes in it caused all the water to run out. And he's like, oh, grandpa, I'm sorry. He's like, you know, I think you can do it. He said, you just got to run faster. And he takes that bucket and he runs down there and he scoops it up and he's coming back as fast as he can. And he just, all of it had drained out and the boy's really getting despondent at that point. And he says, hey, I think you can really do this just one more time.

Just run down there. And he ran down and he came back and he did it with all of his heart. And he was so defeated because he had failed in maintaining any water in the bucket. And so the little boy's downcast and he says, I'm so sorry, grandfather. He's like, why did you have me to do that? And his grandfather said, look inside the bucket.

And he noticed all the dirt and grime had been washed out. And he said, do you understand that's what the word of God is? Sometimes you may not always remember everything you've learned, but it has a cleansing effect upon our life.

And we need to be doused with the word of God. And listen, I don't remember what I ate two weeks ago. I really don't even remember a lot of times what I ate for lunch, but I know it sustains me. I know it's fed me and nourished me. And when you're nourished by the word of God, you may not always remember everything, but it's feeding you. It's sustaining you. It's not always by everything you can retain. There is other work it is accomplishing. Does that make sense? It's not your ability to remember because all of us, anybody else have a hole in the back of your head? Yeah, it's still draining. And it's, don't raise your hand, Alex.

You don't have any holes. The guy retains everything. He's like a terabyte of information. Ask him a question. He's like, yeah. I was sharing with him some stuff I'm studying in church history. Is that what it was he's talking about? And this debate that was going on, I think it was at the Council of Constantinople in 51 AD. And he goes into the details and I'm like, how did he know that? He just has it in there. I read about that like four years ago.

And yeah, I'm sure four minutes ago and I forget. Verse five, he goes on, he says, oh, that my ways were directed to keep thy statutes. Verse four, thou has, let me go back to verse four, he says, thou has commanded us to keep thy precepts diligently. I think it's important to see what he says there in verse four because God is not suggesting that we follow his word.

He's commanding it. And sometimes people want to make it light about, you know, oh God, you know, he's gracious and he is incredibly gracious, merciful beyond measure, beyond measure. But he commands us to keep his word and the reason he commands it is it's the best thing for us. Because if we don't follow the word of God, that's what sin is. Sin is disobeying the word of God. It's disobedience to the word of God. That's 1 John 3, 4.

It's transgression against the word. So love would tell us not to do that. When we raise our children, we're like, do not run on the street, do not touch the stove.

Right? There's things you do not do. And we're very stern about it. We're not like, hey, honey, make sure you don't do this. We put a little fear of God in them. Hey, don't ever touch this.

Right? And they're like, ah, you know, I never will mom, never touch it, you know. And we do that because we want to put some fear that would create protection from a greater pain. And so God's like, I am commanding you to keep these precepts. God has commanded us because he's like, this is severe because the danger of disobedience is so deadly and it's so much destruction that comes. When you look at your life, do you see a life that's diligent in obedience to his word? Going on verse 5, you can see the prayer of the psalmist is like us, isn't it? Oh, that my ways were directed to keep thy statutes.

He realizes his own failings. Boy, we fall short. Man's natural ways and inclination is not toward the word of God, it's away from it. We are inherently depraved. We are bent to do wrong. We feel the depravity, don't we?

We fight that. This verse reminds me of Paul in Romans 7, 18. He said, for I know that in me that's in my flesh dwells no good thing for the will is present with me, but how to perform that which is good I find not. He concludes verse 24, oh wretched man that I am. He was just like he's so sick of his sinful tendencies.

And that's Paul writing. And the cry in prayer verse 5 is so that verse 6 and 7 would come to pass. He says in verse 6, then shall I not be ashamed when I have respect unto all thy commandments? And it wouldn't be the most wonderful thing in eternity to stand before God and hear well done, thou good and faithful servant. To arrive before the glory of Christ and not be ashamed before him. The Bible says that we should live in a way that would honor Christ so that at his appearing we would not be ashamed. And we would honor him. Verse 7, he says I will praise thee with uprightness of heart when I shall have learned thy righteous judgments.

First, there's a removal of shame. Secondly, there's true praise from an upright and clean heart. You know, when we have a pure heart we can worship God in sincerity and purity, but when our hearts are filled with corruption, bitterness, anger, resentment, sin, covetousness, lies, deceit, any other type of sin that can get ahold of our lives, I can tell you it will ruin our worship. That's why the Bible says if you're at odds with somebody you need to go to them, right? Because it'll disrupt your worship.

You can't be right vertically when you have all these problems horizontally. And then thirdly, as we finish this up tonight, verse 8, pursuing God's word must be a commitment that we make. Verse 8, he says I will keep thy statutes, oh forsake me not utterly. So in the face of the battle with his own fleshly struggles to follow God as he should, to keep God's word in complete faithfulness, this doesn't become an excuse for him to throw in the towel. Rather, he becomes resolved to keep the word of God. His failings don't cause him to quit, it makes him more resolved. He commits I will keep thy statutes.

I mean you compare verse 5, oh that my ways were directed, he's struggling there, but he's like I'm going to keep them. We need to come to God and make that commitment and say, God I'm going to keep your word, I will obey you in what you ask me to do, I will follow your word. Listen, our failure to follow as we should is not a reason to quit following.

Rather, failure to follow as we should must be a reason to keep following. If you fall in the mud, you don't stay in the mud. What's the first thing you do if you were to trip and fall in the mud? You quickly get up. I was walking with my daughters down the trail years ago and one of my youngest daughters, she was jumping across this little muddy area and man she slipped and wiped out and it was hilarious. To a young girl, that's devastating isn't it?

A little boy would be playing and they'd be good. But she jumps right out of that and when you fall in the mud, and then my wife's like can you clear that? I'm like are you making fun of my skinny leg? You know I can't jump anymore. We sometimes have the idea that, and I think this is a grave danger among Christians, that if we don't live a perfect life in obedience to God we might as well throw in the towel. And some of you have struggled with that I think, probably in your lives, and I think a lot of people do.

They're like either all in or all out. Like I'm 110% for God and if I mess up then I might as well just quit. And I believe if you fail you need to fail falling forward.

You press on, you get back up and you keep moving forward. You don't quit. You keep following Christ and the Lord is a gracious Savior. I think Psalm 103 is so tremendous to read through when we have our own sins and failures. And that's why he says here, he says I will keep your word and then he says this, oh forsake me not utterly. Lord I'm going to keep your word don't forsake me. Spurgeon says in regards to this, feeling his own incapacity he trembles lest he should be left to himself and this fear is increased by the horror which he has of falling into sin. Listen to what the last verse of this chapter says. Psalm 176.

Look what he says. Let's read this together. I have gone astray like a lost sheep. Seek thy servant for I do not forget thy covenant, commandments.

If I could read properly. But isn't that something? 176 verses in. You will find over and over and over again I'm committed, I'm committed, I love the Lord, your words more. I have gone astray like a lost sheep. The guy who wrote that? That guy?

This one? Like a lost sheep, huh? Seek thy servant. This is the, Lord don't forsake me. You know I'm prone to wander, prone to leave the God I love. This is Psalmist, I do not forget thy commandments.

It's not that I've forgotten but I have wondered. So, so just know this. Satan wants you to think that if you ever mess up in your Christian life just, just, you need to just quit. I knew you would fail. God doesn't love you.

You will fail. You are a sinner. You'll always be a sinner and casting doubt and pushing you down and knocking you into the mud but you need to realize that God is a God who is full of compassion, plenteous in mercy. He is a holy and righteous God. You know when you're kneeling down before him it's like kneeling before an F5 tornado.

He's a powerful, glorious king, right? But he's also a God that not only do we tremble before but also lays his hand upon us with grace and mercy. So just know tonight that, our, our prayer I think should be Ezekiel 36, 27. This is such a, such a tremendous verse. He says, I will put my spirit within you and calls you to walk in my statutes and you shall keep my judgments and do them. Isn't that the prayer we should have God for ourselves? God, would you write your word on my heart that I would not sin against you?

Engrave it into me. Let me not wander from your commandments. And so tonight, have you treasured the word of God? Have you treasured it?

Is it all sufficient for you? If you want the blessed life and even the doubly blessed life as Spurgeon said, then the word of God should be your one driving pursuit in life. If there's anything that people should accuse you of, it should be that you're a person that just talks about the Bible a lot.

You have a scriptural language. You're in the word a lot. That's why I think it's important to be in church a lot. It's why it's important to get up in the morning and read the Bible a lot. It's why it's important to be in life groups in 242. It's not, listen, it's not just you reading it for yourself. It's if you begin to grow in the word, you want others to grow.

That's the benefit of 242 groups. If your growth is not affecting anybody else, then something's off. You need to be plugged into other people.

You need to be rubbing shoulders. And it will organically happen. As you grow in the word, it will have an outward growth in your marriage, your kids and all of that. But the greatest impact, if you ask yourself, how can I have the greatest impact in my life on this earth? It's allowing the word of God to have its greatest impact on you. And as you grow in the word, your life will grow for God.

The fruit will increase. Let this be a fruitful end of 2024, right? Let this be a year where we finish out strong for God. And man, let us be people of the word. Let's all stand tonight.